Day 3: Work with what you've got

To sum up the aim of our "Children's Hope Centers" here's a "before" picture I shot on my last visit--children in the slums of Hyderabad, India--victims of child labor. Her faded shirt says, "LOVE IS THE MESSAGE." That pretty much sums it up!

And, essentially, here's the "after" picture--girls who came out of child labor, now happy to be enrolled at our Children's Hope Center in Hyderabad, India. All because someone cared enough to help pitch in toward their scholarships!

My goal for this 30 day challenge is to raise enough funds to rescue 20 more kids from child labor, with scholarships that will put them through a year of school, tutoring and nutrition. We're at $25 of my $10,000 goal.

It's just $500 per scholarship--that takes care of their shoes, hygiene items, uniforms, tutoring, computer classes, school supplies and nutritious meals served at the centers for an entire year! Come on, we can do better than this! Let's get to that first scholarship today! $475 to go! If you can spare anything, even $5, please donate here.

On to what I was able to cook up with just a dollar's worth of food today... like a lot of things in life, it's all about working with what you've got and making the best of it...

Breakfast. As usual, on the run, so I had to settle for a quick cup of oatmeal. I "bought" a pinch of sugar and cinnamon from my existing stock, using my seasonings "allowance" along with a few raisins from my raisin ration, and boom, I had a decent breakfast that probably cost about 20 cents. It held me over to lunch pretty well. ▼

Lunch. A ramen noodle stew of sorts. Delicious and very hearty! A lot of ingredients here--ramen noodles, 2/3 cup brown rice, 1/3 cup pinto beans, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and one egg prepared egg-drop style. 1/3 of a spicy ramen seasoning packet along with a few dashes of season-all. It really hit the spot! ▼

Dinner. Rice, bean and carrot taquitos! These are amazingly simple and delicious. Used about 2/3 cup of cooked pinto beans to make re-fried beans, 1/3 cup of brown rice, and a few slices of carrot. Microwave 3 corn tortillas in damp paper towels to make them pliant. Baste the tortillas with canola oil. Then fill the tortillas with the ingredients, wrap and flip, placing onto cookie sheet. Bake in the oven at 500F/260C for 8 minutes. Presto! Add pasta sauce sparingly and season with season-all. Absolutely delicious meal, for about 30-40 cents total. ▼

Dessert. Remember my frozen banana slices? Took a couple of those out, added raisins on top and sprinkled with a few dashes of cinnamon from my seasonings allowance, and, dang, these were little bursts of paradise in my mouth! Like ice cream or Japanese mochi! Seriously a major treat! ▼

I really appreciate your support. The blog is getting a lot of attention already--thank you for helping to raise awareness! I'm drinking tons of water and staying busy to keep my mind off of the hunger and cravings. The food looks great and is tasty, but the overall calories are pretty scarce. However, so far I'm doing great.

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps! Currently at $25 of my $10,000 goal! First step: let's get to one scholarship: just $475 to go!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Day 2: Compelled

This is not really a "fun" challenge. Like you don't just wake up one day and say, oh cool, it sure would be fun to try to live on just $30 of food for a month. You have to be compelled by some higher motivation. For me, it's these kids. This is the reason I'm doing this. I am compelled to bring awareness of their situation and try to make a difference in their lives. With your help, we can do it.

This is a kid I met on my visit to Manila, Philippines in April. He's a child labor victim in the Payatas Landfill Scavenger's Colony, Manila, Philippines. Large loads of trash are delivered to this sorting shed where he works alongside other children in extremely high temperatures, sifting through raw garbage looking for redeemable plastics and metals.

All he lacks is an opportunity. His parents cannot afford to send him to school--no way to get him the supplies and uniform he needs. We can change that. With a fund of just $500, we can enroll him or one like him in our education center called "The Children's Hope Center" and his life would be forever changed. Please consider giving whatever you can afford toward my goal of 20 scholarships. We have yet to reach our first step--let's just start with 1 scholarship. $500. Please give whatever you can toward this goal.

In the days ahead I'll be sharing more about the results on the other side of the equation--the kids who have been through our education programs, with lives changed. In the mean time I invite you to visit our Instagram gallery here. 

Update on yesterday's scare at our Philippines Girls Home: all are safe, interim security measures are in place, and the new security wall fund is now in place! Thanks to all who responded! 

On to what I was able to put together for Day 2. Overall, not bad at all.

Breakfast. Two breakfast tacos. One scrambled egg, boiled potato cubes and carrots, brown rice, raw chopped cabbage on corn tortillas. Seasoned by a few dashes of season-all. You really cannot beat breakfast tacos as an easy way to start your day with a hearty kick. All for just about $0.33! ▼

Lunch. My favorite. Egg & noodle fried rice. This is a very simple preparation with carrots and cabbage. The base ingredient is brown rice and pasta noodles. Scramble the egg first and add into the skillet while stir frying the other ingredients. Start with a splash of cooking oil and soy sauce, stir and flip away, and you're good to go. Crazy good meal for only a few cents. ▼

Dinner. Was definitely hungry by dinner time and needed to get something together quickly. So I just threw together my standard re-fried bean recipe with homemade corn tortilla chips as a side. For the main course, ramen noodle stew with brown rice and cabbage. Using a third of the ramen brick and a third of the ramen soup seasoning pack, it was light but just enough, and definitely full of flavor. ▼

Thanks for your support! I'm feeling pretty strong at the end of Day 2, transitioning fairly well.

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps! Currently at $25 of my $10,000 goal!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Day 1: Fried banana peels!

I'm dedicating day 1 of this challenge to the girls of our Philippines Girls Home, which was hit last night with an attempted burglary. Thankfully everyone is safe, but two of our guard dogs were killed and our electrical connection was sabotaged. We're in the process of an emergency response to complete their security wall, a project which has been put on hold due to lack of funds. It's not the focus of my fund raising goal here, but if you feel compelled to help with our Philippines security fund you can donate toward that here.

To be honest, at the moment I am very distracted with this crisis and will have to delay sharing more about the focus of this challenge. But I am very encouraged that we received our first donation toward the goal today--from Poland of all places! It all adds up, and remember, we can make a real difference if we all overcome indifference--the feeling that your contribution will not make an impact. Please read more about the kids of the slum colonies where we work, and donate toward my goal of 20 scholarships here.

Now, on to what I came up with to get me through day 1. 

Breakfast. Something I never actually tried on my previous challenges. An Asian inspiration. I added some seasoned pinto beans to my oatmeal, along with a fried egg and raisins. Definitely plenty of protein and it held me over just fine. A 33-cent power breakfast! ▼

Lunch. I was in a hurry to get back to work in the midst of a hectic day, so I had to throw a quick and basic lunch together. This is a very simple re-fried bean recipe with homemade corn tortilla chips made in my toaster oven. The secret ingredient that really makes the beans is a splash of soy sauce, I bought from my existing stock with my seasonings allowance. ▼

Dinner. Tostadas! Easy recipe! Baste or spray tortillas with a bit of cooking oil, place on cookie sheet in an oven preheated to 450F/230C flip once at 5 minutes, bake 5 minutes more, or adjust to desired golden/brown result. Add re-fried beans and brown rice, chopped carrots and cabbage on top. Delicious and hearty meal for only ~$0.33. ▼

Midnight Snack. Day 1 is a little bit of a struggle adjusting to the lower caloric intake, so I broke down and made myself a couple of snacks! Tore into my new banana to add some sweet fruity goodness to a small cup of oatmeal with a few raisins, too. Froze the remainder of my banana for later rationing. ▼

Experimental Snack. Literally as I was about to throw my banana peel away something stopped me and I thought, wait, there's got to be some serious nutritional value in a banana peel! Sure enough, I looked it up and there are several recipes calling for banana peels, and the health benefits are numerous! One of them is reportedly that it works as an anti-depressant! Washed the peel thoroughly, chopped and fried in a small amount of cooking oil with a pinch of flour and season-all from my seasonings/oils allowance. Truly delicious! ▼

Day 1, done! Thanks for following along!

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps! Currently at $25 of my $10,000 goal!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Here we go again! Shopping day!

I've decided to do another 30 day challenge for two main reasons: 1) out of frustration with my own lack of self-discipline in eating more than I need, and 2) out of a desire to do something more to bring awareness of the realities I'm faced with when visiting the slums. This will be my fourth time to do this, third time to blog about it. 

If you've never seen my other challenge blogs, first of all, thanks for stopping by. Secondly, allow me to introduce you to the basics of the challenge. Disclaimer: I do allow myself coffee or else I'd go crazy. But I do not allow any free food to be given to me, nor do I go looking for it. Otherwise it would be too easy, especially in America. It's basically like, here's 30 bucks, make it stretch so that you can eat 90 decent meals. I think you'll be surprised and what can be done with so little.

Today was shopping day. You can check out my shopping list here. I was bummed that raisins have gone up since last year, and because I got an amazing deal on sale-priced potatoes last year, my cost on potatoes effectively doubled. However, I was blessed to discover that pinto beans were on a crazy sale at Fiesta (our local discount grocery market), helping to make up for these losses.

Through some other adjustments, I managed to get a good list in place, and added the benefit of a fresh banana allowance to be spent a few points along the way. I'm looking forward to having some fresh fruit. It will especially be nice to add to oatmeal, I think!

Another small disclaimer: I already have a stock of pinto beans from the same store, so rather than buy more than I need, I'm just applying today's price to the beans I already have, buying and rationing from my existing stock.

Some images from shopping day:

In tomorrow's post I'll share with you more about the goal of the challenge in terms of some urgent fundraising I need your help with, and more about just who exactly I'm trying to raise awareness for. Thanks for reading! Stay tuned! In the mean time...

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!